Concerning the resilience of Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument

Abstract

Against its prominent compatiblist and libertarian opponents, I defend Galen Strawson's Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility. Against John Martin Fischer, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that an agent can be responsible for an action only if he is responsible for every factor contributing to that action. Against Alfred Mele and Randolph Clarke, I argue that it is absurd to believe that an agent can be responsible for an action when no factor contributing to that action is up to that agent. Against Derk Pereboom and Clarke, I argue that the versions of agent-causal libertarianism they claim can immunize the agent to the Basic Argument actually fail to do so. Against Robert Kane, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that simply the presence of indeterministic factors in the process of bringing an action about is itself what rules out the agent's chance for being responsible for that action.

Free Will, Self‐Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck

“…There has been a promising uptick in explicit defenses of the Basic Argument over the last decade (cf. Coates 2017, Hartman 2018, Hendrickson 2007, Istvan 2011, Klemick 2013 (i) it must not stop the regress in an ad hoc or otherwise arbitrary way (e.g., by insisting, without argument, that the regress in unproblematic or uninteresting 46 ), and (ii) it must not answer the regress in a way that gives rise to another vicious regress, where this new regress stopped in an ad hoc or arbitrary way (e.g., by insisting, without argument, that the new regress in not problematic and/or is not sufficiently interesting to warrant a reply 47 ). So, even if the unstoppable regress challenge does not decisively establish the impossibility of free will or moral responsibility, it gives us a distinct metric by which to measure the "cost" of possibilism-friendly accounts of free will.…”

Constitutive Moral Luck and Strawson's Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Responsibility

“…Thus, heaven and hell are used merely to illustrate that what a person deserves is based on only backward-looking considerations. But then, reference to heaven and hell is not essential to characterizing the nature of true moral responsibility (Corabi 2017; Istvan 2011: 401). And since several philosophers have rightly noted that the appeal to heaven and hell gratuitously introduces confusion into the scope and force of the kind of responsibility at issue (Clarke 2005: 21–22; Fischer and Tognazzini 2011: 25–30; Levy 2011: 3), I consider true moral responsibility as a kind of basic desert and refer to it without reference to heaven or hell.…”

“…Nevertheless, it is important to see that the responsibility premise need not depend on the strong control principle for its merits, because the responsibility premise is weaker than the strong control principle. As Michael Anthony Istvan Jr. (2011: 405–406) rightly contends, the responsibility premise does not require total control over an action for an agent to be truly morally responsible for that action; rather, the responsibility premise requires only that the agent be truly morally responsible for the mere part of her mental constitution that explains her action (cf. Strawson 2002: 445).…”

“…Strawson (1994: 5, 8) has lamented that his Basic Argument is underappreciated. Recently, however, the Basic Argument, or something relevantly like it, has received broad endorsement (Hendrickson 2007; Istvan 2011; Kershnar 2015; Kment 2017; Nagel 1986: 118; Smilansky 2000: ch. 4; Waller 2011: 19–42).…”

Fischer-style Compatibilism

“…Conversely, if one has ultimate control over just one necessary condition of an event's occurrence, then one has a kind of ultimate control over its occurrence (in the sense that one wields a 'veto' over it), even if this control is merely partial. Thus the source-incompatibilist, having distinguished ultimacy from totality, may reasonably claim that ultimate control over any causal contributor to an event is sufficient to get moral responsibility for that event off the ground (Istvan 2011). The totality of one's control-and hence the totality of one's responsibility-is then a subsequent issue.…”